Instant lottery tickets generally include play indicia which initially are covered and not readily visible. The player removes the covering which obscures the play indicia to determine if any of the revealed indicia win a prize. Instant lottery tickets are quite popular because the player knows immediately whether or not he/she has won a prize.
Probability lottery tickets are a special form of instant lottery tickets and have been shown to be quite popular. Probability lottery tickets differ from conventional instant lottery tickets in that each probability lottery ticket includes winning play indicia. There are at least two general types of probability lottery tickets. In the first type, the probability lottery ticket has only one winning play indicia and several non-winning play indicia, all of which are covered initially by a player removable material. The probability lottery ticket also has pre-determined play rules which must be followed for the ticket to qualify as a winning ticket. Whether or not a player has a winning ticket depends not only on revealing the winning indicia but also on playing the probability lottery ticket according to a pre-determined set of play rules. For example, the play rules for a probability lottery ticket may specify that the player can reveal only three of the covered play indicia to qualify for a winning ticket. In this case, if the player were to reveal four of the covered play indicia, the ticket would not be a winning ticket even if one of the revealed play indicia was a winning play indicia.
In the second general type, the probability ticket includes more than one winning play indicia, as well as several non-winning play indicia, all of which are covered initially with a player removable material. As before, the probability lottery ticket has pre-determined rules which must be followed for the ticket to be a winning ticket even if the player uncovers winning play indicia. The main difference is that in this second general type of probability lottery ticket the redemption value of the ticket is not known until the player reveals the winning play indicia according to the pre-determined play rules. For example, a probability lottery ticket may have three winning play indicia in addition to other non-winning play indicia, for example, winning play indicia that have a value of $1.00, $2.00, and $3.00. The redemption value of this ticket depends on which of the three winning play indicia the player uncovers. For example, if the player uncovered only the winning play indicia that has a value of $1.00. The redemption value of the ticket would only be $1.00. However, if the player uncovered two winning play indicia which having values of $1.00 and $3.00, respectively, the ticket would have a redemption value of $4.00, provided that the player reveals the winning play indicia according to the pre-determined play rules.
For both instant lottery tickets and probability lottery tickets, a ostensibly winning ticket must be validated before a prize is awarded to the player. Validation includes determining the size of the prize to be awarded the winner. In other words, the redemption value of the ticket must be determined before the prize is awarded. Although a seemingly simple task, validating both instant lottery tickets and probability lottery tickets can be quite problematic because both types of lottery tickets are subject to tampering and fraud. For example, it is known that attempts have been made to redeem non-winning instant lottery tickets by altering the revealed play indicia so that the ticket appears to include winning play indicia. Attempts to guard against this type of tampering have included encoding information in the bar codes of the lottery tickets. However, the bar codes themselves can be subject to tampering and fraud. Consequently, using bar codes alone to prevent this type of lottery ticket tampering has not been completely successful. Another type of tampering occurs even before instant lottery tickets are played. In the past, unscrupulous individuals have tried to identify which tickets, if any, in a pack of instant lottery tickets includes winning play indicia. This has been done by various techniques, for example, candling the ticket, lifting and replacing the player-removable material, or pin-pricking the player removable material. This type of tampering most often occurs before the tickets are sold to the public at large and often involves persons having access to full ticket packages, such as ticket sales persons. As a result, identifying this type of fraud/tampering by using only information encoded in the ticket bar codes has not been very successful.
Because each ticket includes at least one winning play indicia, probability lottery tickets are especially vulnerable to tampering or fraud. Because every ticket can win if the right play indicia are selected, some players look for ways to determine the play indicia contained in every play area in order to identify the location of a winning combination. If the player can conceal the fact that he has seen the play indicia, the player subsequently can remove the latex covering from the play areas containing the winning combination and claim a prize. One technique used to accomplish this result involves lifting the player removable material to look at the play indicia before placing the player removable material back into place. The player then removes the player removable material over the number of play indicia specified in the pre-determined play rules, including the player removable material covering the winning play indicia. The ticket therefore appears to have been played according to the pre-determined rules and hence qualifies as a winning ticket. Typically, probability game lottery tickets are validated by the visual observation of a human lottery agent. Consequently, it can be difficult to visually detect this sort of tampering. Conventional bar code systems are also inadequate to protect against this tampering and fraud because the information stored in the bar code cannot itself identify which of the player removable materials have been lifted.
Another problem associated with both instant lottery tickets and probability lottery tickets is multiple redemption of winning tickets. If a person can present a winning ticket more than once to obtain the indicated prize, such multiple redemption is also fraudulent. In some cases, the sales person to whom the ticket is presented is instructed to mark or stigmatize the ticket after the prize has been awarded. However, if a winning ticket is not stigmatized this type of fraud is difficult to overcome.
Hence, it is desirable to provide a lottery ticket validation system which not only determines the redemption value of the ticket but also discourages tampering, alteration, and fraud.